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Sunday, September 29, 2013

In 4 short years...

...I will become a Naturopathic Doctor. Tomorrow, Monday September 30th, 2013 marks the first day of the rest of my life. I have never been more excited, confident, proud and passionate about anything like this in my life. I am finally following my dreams. My dreams will come true, in 4...short...years.

These past 2 weeks have been awesome, but I am SO ready for tomorrow at 10am. I have had 2 weeks of "prep", pep talks, resource overload, advice, you name it that I just can't wait to get the party started!! The Natural Advantage program that I was selected for (only 17 of us were accepted) was an amazing program. I was part of history too because it was the first time they have done this program. It helped me beyond words. Not only did I learn a lot of inside information about the next 4 years, I was able to get the overwhelming factor out of the way. It calmed my nerves so I was able to relax this past week at orientation and just sit there and get more and more excited for tomorrow.

I also was able to spend the whole week with one of my Quarter 1 teachers of HUBI ("hue bee"). HUBI (which I will refer to a lot, is Human Biology). I gained valuable insight into the way he teaches, tests and other helpful hints. I also developed friendships with others in my class. Us NA peeps are pretty close! The whole 5 days was fantastic and I am so thankful I was accepted to be part of it.

The first quarter (you talk quarters in med school, so I am Q1) SCNM makes your schedule for you. I wasn't able to pick my times for my classes, they were assigned to me. Q2 I can register on my own and fight for the times I want! Ha! So, speaking of my schedule, I have HUBI Monday thru Thursday for 4 hours a day. I sit in the same room for 4 hours and each hour the professor changes. Take that for a lecture. I also have HUBI application on Friday afternoon. HUBI also has 2 labs (mine are Wed and Fri mornings). I get to meet my cadaver on Friday I believe. The other class I have is CLPR ("clipper") which is Clinical Practical. There is a lab for that as well. The final class I have is NTMD which is the philosophy and history of Naturopathic medicine. All of the above equates to 28 credits. Did you know that a normal person (not medical school student) has about 15 credit hours a semester which equates to about 120 or more TOTAL credit hours after 4 years?? Well, I will be taking 120 credit hours my first year. Holy bananas. What am I getting myself into?! My dreams, that's what and I couldn't be more ready or excited. I really like my schedule too. For some reason I had it in my head that I would be at SCNM M-F from 8-5pm. I actually have quite a few breaks and that is a relief.

This coming week will probably be very overwhelming as they refer to med school as trying to drink water from a firehose. I will be getting A LOT of information in a short amount of time. Q1 is all about finding a balance. We have been given so many resources and everyone at SCNM is like a new family and each and every person there is willing to help you out. I just need to seek help right away and not get behind. This journey is going to be difficult, stressful and a lot of work, but if it were easy everyone would be doing it. It's not in my character to give up so I am ready to embark on making my dreams a reality!